


Hell Is For Children

by ignipes



Category: Supernatural
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-04-14
Updated: 2007-04-14
Packaged: 2017-10-03 13:54:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ignipes/pseuds/ignipes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He doesn't know where they go after he burns them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hell Is For Children

"I could stop you, you know."

Dean paused to catch his breath before answering. The girl was standing over him, pale and tenuous, her dark hair lit silver in the moonlight.

"You could try," he said. He dug his foot into the soft earth and hauled himself out of the grave, tossed the shovel aside and reached for the bag that held his salt, matches and lighter fluid. "I doubt you'd succeed."

"Why? Because I'm a girl?"

Dean smiled at her defensive tone. "Heck, no. I'd rather tussle with a guy than an angry chick any day. But I've been doing this a long time. I'm good at my job."

"You have a dumb job." She flickered unsteadily, and for a moment her face was skeletal and gaunt like an electrocuted cartoon character. When she reappeared she was sitting beside him, her sneakered feet kicking idly at the side of her grave. "So what happens now?"

"Now," Dean told her, "I burn your bones."

"I mean." She hesitated, and her legs were still. It was strange how little he could feel her, though she was just inches away. She was an absence of heat, a space without air, disconcerting and hollow. Her hair fell over her face as she looked down at her own body, desiccated and unrecognizable in a shroud of rotten plastic, arms and legs still bound as her killer had left them. "I mean, what happens to me?"

Dean exhaled slowly. "I don't know." He didn't lie to her; she would know.

"I didn't mean to do anything bad," she said. She sounded very young and scared, like a child caught standing over the shards of a broken antique vase. "I really didn't. I was just so _mad_ at them."

Mad enough to kill six people, gouging their eyes out with her fingers and leaving them to bleed: the boy who had killed her and the five former classmates who had kept his dirty little secret.

"I get that," Dean told her, and he meant it. "Would've pissed me off too."

"I haven't been to church in forever," the girl went on, and for the first time he heard a note of panic in her voice. She looked at him in alarm, her eyes wide and gray and empty. "Does that matter? Mom stopped going when Dad left, and I never... I never thought it would matter."

Nobody ever does, not when they're sixteen and in love, the whole world ahead and nothing but childhood games behind. She'd been a pretty girl in life, quick and bright, loved horses and wanted to be a doctor, still wore half of a friendship necklace another girl had given her in fourth grade. Dean could see the necklace tangled in what was left of her corpse, a frail gold chain and silly, cheap charm below a twisted mask of death.

The girl who held the other half was dead now too, bled out through her eyes for never telling anyone what she saw.

She asked again, "Does it matter?"

Dean shook his head. "I don't know."

"Will my mom ever find out what happened to me?"

"Yeah," Dean said. He'd spoken to her mother, a sad shell of a woman, red-eyed and sniffling in a spotless suburban house. "Yeah, she will. I'll make sure of it."

The grave was well-hidden, deep in the woods, but an anonymous call to the cops once he was safely out of town ought to do the trick. The charm would survive the fire, and the rest of her jewelry. There would be enough to identify her.

"Good." She nodded her herself. "That's good."

Dean slid back from the grave and stood up, brushing the dirt from his jeans. She didn't move as he twisted the top off the lighter fluid and splashed it into the grave, soaking her decayed flesh and pattering like rain on what was left of the garbage bag she'd been stuffed into. She didn't move as he poured salt over her, white as fresh snow, and she didn't move while he flipped the book of matches open; there was a waitress's name and number scribbled on the inside, smudged beyond recognition.

She didn't move and he said nothing as he struck the match, watched it flare red and gold and felt the heat on his fingertips, and dropped it into her grave.

The fire engulfed her immediately, filling the quiet forest with the familiar crackle and smell of old, burning flesh. When he was sure the flames were strong, Dean stepped back, carried his shovel and duffel to a safe distance, and he crouched at the base of a tree and watched.

She wavered as the flames lapped higher, her gray form fading against the brilliant orange, and only once did she turn to look at him. He thought there might be tears on her face, but too quickly her face was gone, then her body, cracking like coals from the inside and crumbling into the grave.

"Nice knowing you, kiddo," Dean said softly, and he touched two fingers to his forehead in a farewell salute.

He waited until the fire died, toying with the book of matches and thinking about how long she had been here, rotting and cold and alone in a lonely, anonymous grave. When he finally stood, his legs were stiff and the sky was brightening in the east, pale gray over the tops of the trees. He lifted the bag and shouldered the shovel, tucked the matchbook into his pocket and turned away from the smoke-filled clearing.

It was a long walk back to the car, and the sun would be up soon.


End file.
